Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Drawing penalties while on the penalty kill

While yesterday's post looked at teams and players that take penalties on the power play, thus killing their momentum, today's post is a look into teams that get themselves out of trouble by drawing calls against the opposition while short-handed.

There is obviously some luck involved in this, but getting the other guy to do something stupid does require some amount of skill. You could also call it poor sportsmanship or cheating (which is what we all call it when we see the other team do it to our favorite).

Here are the top 10 teams at drawing the call to even things up:

Team

#

Lightning

36

Penguins

34

Blue Jackets

32

Canucks

31

Maple Leafs

28

Coyotes

28

Hurricanes

27

Rangers

27

Kings

27

Sharks

27

Here are the 9 players that have drawn 6 or more calls:

Player

#

Dustin Brown

12

Ryan Kesler

8

Brandon Backes

7

Chris Kelly

7

Vernon Fiddler

7

Mike Smith

6

Kyle Cumiskey

6

Jordan Staal

6

Marek Zidlicky

6

A few notes (again):

Mike Smith was the top goalie, somehow drawing 6 calls, including a double-minor from Chris Neil. If I'm the goalie, I'm not sure I want to mess with Neil.

Kyle Cumiskey pulled the trick twice in the same game (in the same period), against top penalty taker Aucoin (per yesterday's chart) and Lombardi in a game against Phoenix.